


lonely ghosts

by saltsanford



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Blood, Canon Compliant, Cara POV, Gen, Post Season 1, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22213561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsanford/pseuds/saltsanford
Summary: The adrenaline is still coursing through her veins though the battle has ended. Cara never feels jittery when she fights. That’s when her spine stitches itself straight and all the edges of things become sharp and clear while her center goes quiet, like a stone dropped into water. It isn’t until the after that her arms feel shot through with lightning, that her blood buzzes like bees, incessant, maddening.Cara and Greef in the aftermath. Takes place immediately after season 1, episode 8.
Relationships: Cara Dune & Greef Karga
Comments: 14
Kudos: 73





	lonely ghosts

_the devil that you know_  
_is better than the one you don't_  
_and so it goes,_  
_like lonely ghosts_  
_at a roadside cross_  
_we stay because_  
_we don't know where else to go._  
-Lonely Ghosts, O+S

* * *

Cara doesn’t think she’s ever earned such a well-deserved drink in her _life._ Well—okay, that’s probably not true. She’s seen more than her share of battles, many of them— _most_ of them—worse than this one, but whatever. The point is, she needs some booze, and she needs some noise, and she needs to not be _standing here_ watching beskar armor catch the dying light high above her, and she needs this all to happen _now._

The adrenaline is still coursing through her veins though the battle has ended. Cara never feels jittery when she fights. That’s when her spine stitches itself straight and all the edges of things become sharp and clear while her center goes quiet, like a stone dropped into water. It isn’t until the after that her arms feel shot through with lightning, that her blood buzzes like bees, incessant, maddening.

She and Greef Karga stand there in oddly companionable silence for nearly five minutes after Mando’s ship has taken off—she can’t think of him as Din, not yet—until Greef turns to her and, apparently, reads her mind. “Fancy a few drinks?”

“We blew the cantina up,” she says, just to be a shit. “What drinks?”

“ _We_ didn’t blow the cantina up,” he corrects with a smile, “and there are plenty of other cantinas on Nevarro, I can assure you of that.”

“You buying?”

“But of course,” Greef says, gesturing grandly towards the horizon. He likes grand gestures and grander words. It feels less like he’s got something to prove and more like he’s trying to gain back something lost, but she’s still going to fuck with him about it at some point.

Cara falls in step beside him. The trek back is a long one, but it’s good, it lets her work off some of her anxious energy. Greef is rather quiet, which surprises her a little—she’d pegged him to be more like she was after a battle: wound up, rowdy, ready for another fight or a good fuck or at least some boisterous conversation. A former squad mate had called her out on it once, told her that no matter how loud she was after, she couldn’t put off the quiet that would come. There was always another after, one that would come in the loneliness of night or in the middle of the bright sunshine, one that she could never escape.

Cara hadn’t bothered explaining that she was already in the after, that her life had been split long ago. There had been the _before,_ when she had roots that stretched from the base of her sternum to the soft dark of the forests where she grew up, and the _after,_ when she was a stray, untethered, when those roots had been ripped bloody and burning from her chest.

It looks as if she was right: they _have_ cleaned up the town, and Greef’s shoulders loosen when they arrive at one of the seediest cantinas she’s ever seen. Everyone glances up when they walk in, but no one says anything. Greef orders them two shots each right off the bat—she’s liking him more and more by the minute—and a huge pint of fozbeer each to wash them down.

“That wasn’t your first, was it?” Cara asks him. They’ve downed the shots and started on the fozbeers and she’s already feeling better, ready to poke a bit and see what he’s made of.

He gives her a slightly incredulous look. “My first shot of kyrf? Of course not.”

Cara snorts into her beer. “No,” she snickers, and he grins too. “Your first _battle._ You’ve been in a few before.”

Greef eyes her appraisingly. “What makes you say that?”

“You didn’t shit yourself, for one.”

“Perhaps it’s my natural disposition to remain calm in trying situations.”

“Doubt it.” She rolls her eyes when he continues to regard her, obnoxiously mysterious, and ticks the reasons off on her fingers. “You were moving on experience, not instinct. You’re not a bad shot. You were willing to talk your way out, sure, but you didn’t panic. And…”

“And?” he prompts.

“ _And_ you covered me when I dragged Mando inside.” She shrugs. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t my first. Probably won’t be my last, either.”

“Cheers to that.”

They clink glasses, take a healthy swig each. “So,” Greef says, setting his beer down. “You’re really staying on Nevarro?”

“Got no choice. I told you, my chain code is a problem. The only ship I could’ve gotten out on just booked a one way trip to who-knows-where.”

“I’m sure Mando would’ve dropped you off anywhere you wanted to go,” says Greef, too casually.

Cara makes a face. “Why would I want to leave? I was hiding out on some backwater mud-hole before this with shit-all to do. At least here I can hunt some storm troopers and there’s a chance for paying work.” She eyes him. “Unless you were fucking with me?”

“Not at all,” he says honestly, spreading his arms wide. “A woman of your talents? You’ll have no end to work.”

“And you can really clear my _clerical issues?_ ” She makes little air quotes with her fingers.

“Cara, you will soon find that there are few things I cannot do.”

She rolls her eyes but gives him a grateful nod. “Good. That’s good. I want to be busy.”

It’s the opposite of what she’d said to Mando less than a week ago, when she had told him she was done playing soldier. She’d meant it, then—truth be told, she had _liked_ that simple, backwater mud-hole. Maybe because the way the trees caught the light at sunset reminded her of the _before,_ maybe because she was fucking tired and Sorgan was slow and lazy and she needed that, at least for a while.

But she had always known it wouldn’t last. She’s lived a life of violence for so long that it had been difficult to imagine any sort of real return to monotony. It was almost a relief when Mando had talked her into helping the villagers—a greater relief still when he’d returned to Sorgan. _Oh good, something interesting_ , she’d thought, and on the heels of that: _oh thank fuck, they aren’t dead yet._

“They’ll be alright,” Greef says abruptly, reading her mind _again_ and brushing an absent hand over his arm where the kid had healed his wound. “The child has probably patched him up already.”

Cara leans forward, propping her chin on a hand. “What did it feel like?”

She jerks her head towards his arm, and he follows her gaze with a noncommittal noise. “Better,” he says eventually. “Almost immediately just…better.”

“Mmmm.” She pauses then figures, what the heck. “Kid tried to kill me, you know.”

It’s worth it for the flabbergasted look on Greef’s face—she thinks he might be the kind of man who’s difficult to surprise. “ _Really?_ ”

“Really.” Cara signals the bartender for two more shots, and after they’ve downed them, she leans forward again. “So we’re arm wrestling on the way to Nevarro, right—”

“You and the child?!”

She nearly spits a mouthful of beer across the table. “No,” she gasps, thumping her chest, “me and _Mando,_ idiot—”

They dissolve into a fit of snorts and giggles. She can barely feel the booze and she doubts he can either, but they collapse half onto the table, gasping for breath, lost in that post-fighting haze where the most random shit is so fucking _funny_ you could just die, you really could.

“Anyway,” she hiccups when she can speak again, “anyway, so—we’re arm wrestling and it’s taking forever, but I’m about to win, obviously, when all of a sudden, I can’t _breathe._ ”

Greef’s eyes widen as she lets that sit. “The little one?”

“Bingo. Mando realizes what’s going on, and he goes to stop the kid, and just like that I can breathe again.” She shrugs, trying to downplay the utter terror she’d felt when she realized what had happened. She knew of that power and the things it had done, and she can’t deny that it had bothered her at first, when the kid had tried to harm her and then gone and healed Greef—Greef, who had been planning to _kill_ his protector and take the child when all Cara wanted to do was keep them safe.

Cara had wondered, just for a moment, if the kid somehow sensed the dark hunger in her, the thing that had sprung up thick and vicious and sickening from the moment her life had been so starkly divided into before and bloody after, the thing that would never be sated no matter how many imps she killed.

But she’d let go of that feeling almost immediately. He was just a baby, and besides, Mando had told her in a weird, guilty tone what happened the last time there had been others on the ship, how the child had come to harm and almost death. He’d sat there so quietly after this somber explanation that she’d nudged his shoulder with her own, hard. “Stop. You’re doing the best you can to keep him safe. That’s why you’re going back there, right?”

“Wow,” says Greef, snapping her back to the present. “The ability to heal and cause harm. It’s no wonder what’s left of the empire is after him.”

“Yeah,” says Cara, her smile twisting hard into a scowl. “Sick fucks. Kid’s never gonna know a moment’s peace at this rate.”

“He might,” allows Greef, “with Moff Gideon dead.”

“There’ll be others after him, though,” says Cara, and here they are, arrived at last at the thing she wants to discuss least in the world.

Greef hones in on it at once, eyes sharp and calculating but not cruel, at least she doesn’t think so. “I was surprised you didn’t go with them.”

Cara will not be rankled by the knowing way he is looking at her. “I did a job, and it’s over. Nothing more for me to do.”

“Job?”

“Yes, job.”

“So you were paid for it?”

She opens her mouth, closes it again. In truth, she’d completely forgotten about the money until this very second, and that’s so _unlike her_ that she can only stare. It must be written on her face, because Greef makes a knowing noise and sits back in his chair. “Not to worry. Mando knew I’d pay you. You’ll be taken care of.” He shrugs. “The imperial client _did_ end up dead, after all.”

The silence stretches on, growing awkward for the first time. Cara goes to get them two more beers because she doesn’t do awkward, and when she returns, he’s still eyeing her curiously like she’s a puzzle he can’t quite piece together.

She ignores him for another few sips until she can’t take the tension anymore. “What,” she says flatly, irritably. She’s allowed to be irritable after this day, and he’s ruining her buzz by bringing up the thing she wants to talk about least and _staring_ at her about it. May as well let him get it out of his system so they can move along.

“I’m just wondering if you would’ve done it.”

For fuck’s sake. Cara hates cryptic people. “Would’ve done what, Karga?”

“What Din asked you to.”

They both pause, momentarily distracted as he tests the name, feels it out. It was not a name given freely, but Mando—Din?—hadn’t seemed upset at its reveal. Then again, did any of them have the time to be upset? Did Greef have time to fret about his reputation? Did Cara have time to storm and rage at the sound of the sacred name of her _before_ in the imp’s mouth? No. There was no time. There was never any time.

It’s a good name for him, she thinks. _Din._ Simple, bell-like, a quick chime in the front of the mouth. The opposite of her name, _Carasynthia_ , the kind of name you needed to roll along your entire tongue, the kind of name that a mother insisted on calling her eldest daughter in full right up until her very last transmission, the one that had been cut off at the quick when she’d paused and said _one moment Carasynthia, I just heard the strangest sound,_ and then never said anything again.

Anyway. _Anyway._ Din. A bell, a chime. She likes it, decides that she’s going to use it unless he gives some sort of sign that he’s uncomfortable with it. Which will likely be a non-issue, because she is here and he is who knows where, which is fine. It’s fine.

“You’re ignoring my question.”

“I’m not ignoring it, I’m—” Cara gives her head a little shake. “Would’ve done _what?_ ”

“Taken the child,” Greef says, clearly exasperated that she’s not hanging onto his every word. “If Din hadn’t made it out of there. Protected him.”

“It was hardly a noble gesture,” says Cara, although she knows that’s not what he’s really asking. “Their armorer was right there. I only would’ve had to watch him for an hour tops.”

“And if she hadn’t been? Or if she’d given you Din’s mission?”

“She’s not my commander, she couldn’t have given me a mission,” Cara grumps, but Greef just looks at her and she sighs, hears _you tell them Din Djarin sent you_ whisper through her. “Yes. Okay? Yes, I would’ve done it. Is there a point to this?”

“If that’s the case, then I’m just wondering why you aren’t there now.”

“Because he _did_ make it out of there,” she says, and tries not to think about what they’re doing now. Din had been almost a dead weight against her side at times in those tunnels, but that bacta had done its job well enough that he could go toe-to-toe with a fucking TIE fighter. Besides, Greef was probably right—if he’d still been in bad shape on the Razor Crest, the kid would’ve healed him.

“He probably could’ve used someone to watch his back.”

He’s definitely needling her now, and she sets her bottle down hard enough that the adjoining table of Twi’leks glances over. “Shit, Greef, you care about the kid too, enough to betray your own team, why didn’t _you_ go with them?”

Greef has the good grace to look abashed, at least, and order them each another shot. She downs hers at once and the bees buzz louder through her blood, because, because, because—

The thing is. The thing _is._

She’s always been a good second. Always. She could command when she needed to, could teach when she’d needed to. She had liked calling the shots on Sorgan, had liked teaching those farmers to protect themselves even more, but she thrived when she had a back to watch, a team to protect, a target to point herself at when people were counting on her.

 _I’m not in the mood to play soldier,_ she’d told Din, but she hadn’t meant the fighting. She hadn’t meant the spine stitched straight or the calm center of her skull like a stone in water. She hadn’t even meant the blood or the bombs.

She’d meant the…the _this._ The being a second thing. The being a partner thing. The dragging them out of harm’s way thing, the pulling your hand away from the nape of their neck to find your fingers bloody thing.

The moment sparks to life in her mind with sudden clarity. She’d felt his hair, though she hadn’t meant to, fingertips brushing just under the lid of his helmet. It had been soaked with sweat and blood and it felt just a little too long, like it hadn’t been trimmed in a while, and there’d been something so terrifying about the accidental intimacy of it all that her own blood ran cold.

She’d meant the watching your team die thing, your hands streaked with their blood. Their palm in yours, gripped tight in an arm wrestling match just hours prior; their fingers, featherlight around yours as they gasped for their last breath.

Cara would’ve done it. All of it. Taken the kid and found his family, because she’d made a promise, and that’s what you did when your dying partner asked something of you, even if you’d only been partners for a short time.

“Because he didn’t ask me to.”

Cara’s so deep in her own thoughts that she has to backtrack to remember her original question. “To go with him?”

“Indeed. Truth be told, I don’t think I would have either way. Nevarro is my home, and I have a guild to run. But…”

Greef smiles a little, and she lifts an eyebrow. “What?”

He leans forward, conspiratorial. “There was a moment when I thought we might not have a choice in the matter. That we’d all get wrapped up in their little adventure. You, me, and the droid.” He pauses, laughs. “We made a good team for a moment there, didn’t we?”

They did. She knows exactly which moment he’s talking about, too: right after the e-web had exploded and she’d charged out of the building to see Din lying there, when she’d trusted without looking that the droid would watch the child, that Greef would cover her.

She’d been there before, of course, in the middle of tight knit alliances with others—the last bits of their respective squads, people she would’ve died for despite just learning their names five minutes prior. That was how it worked in battle, in war. This—this wasn’t a war or even a proper battle, it was something far more rag-tag and a bit broken, but it had been effortless, wordless, and it had worked. _They_ had worked, for a minute there.

Cara wonders if it had felt effortless to Din, too. He had come to her, asked for her help, named her his friend. She thinks of his guns in her hands, the relaxed set of his shoulders as he let her pick through them. He’d asked her to watch his back. Would he have asked her to watch it for a bit longer, if she’d given him the chance?

She supposes she’ll never know.

“We did,” she says, smiling at Greef. “We made a damn good team.”

He slaps the table and stands up, only a little shaky. She reaches out to steady him anyway. “Ah—thank you. Well, they’re there and we’re here. Doesn’t mean we can’t be a safe harbor for them, if they return.”

Cara has never been someone’s safe harbor before, has always been their battering ram, their second gun, the eyes on their six. She wonders if there’s a difference between the two for people like them, between a place to land and a place to launch—wonders, still if she’s made the right decision.

Together, she and Greef leave the cantina into the gathering night, their own clan of two—

For now.

**Author's Note:**

> i love this show and i love cara dune holy shit
> 
> thank you as always to my girl [melissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniMax/pseuds/MiniMax) for the beta <3


End file.
